Yorgen Fenech requests revocation of Melvin Theuma's pardon in fresh legal bid

Yorgen Fenech, who is awaiting trial on indictment for commissioning the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, has asked for the revocation of the presidential pardon given to the self-confessed intermediary in the murder plot, Melvin Theuma.

This emerges from a judicial protest filed today by Fenech’s lawyers. 

The court filing states that Theuma’s pardon, signed by the President on 25 November 2019, had been issued in connection with Theuma’s involvement in over five serious crimes.

It lists those crimes as being the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia in October 2017, laundering the proceeds of crimes relating to illegal gambling and lotteries, his involvement in the hold up of the Balzan branch of HSBC in November 2007, another hold up at the Casino’ di Venezia in Birgu in February 2010, as well as in the subsequent hold up at HSBC in Qormi, in June that same year.

The lawyers pointed out that Theuma’s pardon had been granted on several conditions, one of them being that it would be “revoked and treated as if it never had been given should Melvin Theuma refuse to testify or fail to give a deposition or statement requested of him…”

On 7 October 2022, and 25 May 2023, Theuma had been due for cross-examination before the Court of Magistrates in the compilation of evidence against Yorgen Fenech as a condition of his pardon, but had refused to do so.

Last month, Fenech’s lawyers had sent a letter to the President of the Republic, bringing the fact that Theuma had “manifestly breached” the conditions of his pardon to the President’s attention. The letter asked the President to revoke Theuma’s pardon, in view of the “irreversible breach” of the conditions imposed.

The judicial protest points out that just yesterday, the Government had published a statement reporting that the Cabinet had decided to advise the President not to revoke Theuma’s pardon, on the advice of the Attorney General and the Commissioner of Police.

The Attorney General’s volte-face meant that she had given advice to the Cabinet that ran contrary to advice previously given on the same merits.

The fact that Cabinet’s decision had been taken on the advice of the Attorney General and the Commissioner of Police amplified the gravity of the situation, “because the AG and the Commissioner of Police were and are, respectively, the prosecutors in the proceedings (against Fenech) and therefore have every interest that the pardon not be revoked…”

“Therefore, the advice that the Attorney General and the Commissioner of Police are giving to his Excellency the President of the Republic of Malta is to effectively ignore the conditions he imposed in the pardon he gave.”